GTBANK must stop Exposing our money to the 737 Fraud

Do you know that your money is now accessible to people who do not even have your pin number or token or even your ATM card? Of all the other standard banking securities we have seen, the GTBank 737 service is the poorest? It allows anyone who has your phone or your phone number to gain direct access to all of your money, without you ever knowing.

And NO, the person does not need to know your PIN number or your account number.

Well, somebody reported a very sad story of how his phone lost network and he didn't know that a hacker had simply swapped lines with him. The hacker withdrew 260,000naira and that was the end of it. But what if yours is not as complicated as that? What if your phone was snatched away from you. Then the person simply dialled *737*5000# GTB will debit you of 5000 naira and send the phone 5000 airtime. Then the person can use Me2U transfer to send it to his number, and this can continue until you reclaim your line.

Well, it doesn't always have to be a thief. Your best friend can decide to punish you. When your salary is paid, he can sneak in and dial *737*10000# once a day for five days, delete the sms alert and you would never know how come you never run out of airtime. Wait until you go to the ATM and be shocked to see what you have left in your account.

Again, it doesn't have to be this way. My story is a rather sad one. I travelled out of Nigeria, I thought my MTN line was still active. I had no idea it had been sold to a new MTN customer. This person started using *737* to recharge his line. I lost 65,000 naira in ten days before I discovered it.

What do you think happens to GTBank customers who die, and their lines are re-sold?
What about the old man who mistakenly entered a wrong phone number when filling his GTBank form?
What do you say about the fact that the thief doesn't need your pin, Token, Password, Account Number or even your name, yet he has direct access to your money?

But GTB is not concerned. They said that it is your duty to protect your phone. Let us ask them a questions.

When we were filling the account opening form, did we give them the phone number as "CONTACT NUMBER" or as "ACCOUNT PASSWORD" ?

When we were opening our account, did we authorise them to replace our token, PIN , secret answer, password, online username, long card number, cvvc code etc with ONLY phone number?

A serious bank takes security very seriously. They operate TWO-LAYER AUTHENTICATION. They either ask for:

ATM card + PIN
USERNAME + PASSWORD
SECRET ANSWER + TOKEN DIGITS
etc

But the 737 service only asks for one layer authentication - PHONE NUMBER.
They do not care who is authorizing the payment.
They do not care if the person is doing so to frustrate the account owner or not.
They do not bother that such things are irreversible and must therefore be thoroughly verified.

Of all the banks in Nigeria, GTBank is the one that has exposed people's money to this very porous loophole.

And what do they do wen you fall victim?
They blame you for being careless with your phone.

A customer care attendant said to me "your phone should be your private property, we will accept any request from your phone without further verification", yes, even if it is a request to wipe out all the money in my account.

Today, I call on every one to sign this petition to call GTBANK to stop this 737 service or we close our account. It is not helping us if they cannot afford to introduce an additional security layer.

Olusola Ayoola